Alumni « Associated English Graduate Students

Alumni

This is where AEGS posts information about alumni relations. Part of the club’s mission is to create a sense of institutional legacy at MSU so that grads feel camaraderie rather than isolation.

Any and all alumni of the English Graduate Program at MSU are invited to send brief bios to be posted here. Email aegsofmsu@gmail.com.

Ariana Paliobagis (2008) survived Joan of Arc in Japan in spite of many “Huh?”s, wrote dense, obtuse, and, let’s face it, downright bad poetry, and confused many an unwary soul while explicating her Spiral Theory during her masters program. Her thesis received departmental accolades. Please feel free to email Ariana directly at arianajp@aol.com.
Thesis Title: I’m so bored with the U.S. – and beyond: theorizing the emergence of postmodern slackers and global Generation X culture

Breeman Ainsworth III (2008) Thesis Link Pending

Ed McKenna (2008) Thesis Title: Live or Die: unmasking the mythologies of Anne Sexton’s poetry

Michael Becker graduated in 2007 after exploring the backwaters of hypertext theory for two years. His thesis was on the spatiality of hypertext and the shrinking “distance” between authors and readers, a subject he hopes to explore in a doctoral program after a few years spent as a mild-mannered reporter for the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. He lives in Bozeman and writes when he can.
Thesis title: The Space Between: How Hypertext Affects the Author/Reader Divide.

Ryan Storment graduated from MSU in 2007 and served as Vice President for AEGS. The focus of his work centered on ways in which Western Civilization has attempted to configure and reconfigure islands through traditional island narratives and science fiction. This fixation reveals that islands not only become a literary trope, but reinforce our compulsions with resistant voices that threaten our configurations of space. Currently Ryan is an occasional Adjunct Instructor for the English Department and the College of Letters and Science. He hopes to make the jump to a PhD program in the not-too-distant future.
Thesis title: Other Spaces, Other Voices: Heterotopic Spaces in Island Narratives.

Brita Graham graduated from MSU in 2007 after amazing her professors and fellow GTA’s by actually doing her thesis on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Brita studied other aspects of pop culture (including Godzilla and Freddie Mercury), tricksters, myth and symbol, vampire literary history, deconstruction, post-modernism, chaos theory, and various other odds and ends. As the co-founder and first president of AEGS, she was privileged to a be a part of planting the seeds of change for future grad students and enjoyed making Ryan suffer a little. Brita also integrated Taoist philosophy into her classroom teaching experience with very positive results. She is the mother of two children, Quinton and Aislinn, and the daughter of a Chemistry professor and a children’s librarian.
Thesis Title: Buffy at Play: Tricksters, Deconstruction, and Chaos at Work in the Whedonverse.